Our country is in a serious moral decline. Every day, the mind of the citizens is bombarded with the happening/s of evil acts across the nation. The vices such as social injustices, merciless killings, cheating culture in exams, high levels of corruption, unwed babies, broken marriages, and the biggest challenge is an erosion of unemployed youth who are engaged in various sort of criminal activities such as drug abuse and burglary to name but a few. In amidst of all these social challenges as well as social development, the country has no greater responsibility than to strive to raise virtuous citizens of good character and Citizenship.
Education psychologists argues that ‘good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good.’ Education is a mutual connection that revolves around the individual’s habit of the mind, habit of the heart and habit of action. Good citizenship is assured when these habits are intertwined in social settings and services. Indeed, there is a dire need to foster on applied morals and good character development to the young people, such effort requires a diverse collaboration of actors such as parents, teachers, educators and government among other stakeholders in the society.
Character development among the leaners does not happen in a vacuum but it functions within a social environment which is deeply embedded in teaching and nurturing of values, knowledge and skills from childhood. Navigating and changing the complex systems of moral decline within our society requires particularly the connectedness of home, school and the community. Although, parents are the primary moral educators to their children, teachers play a key role as surrogate parents towards instilling moral, performance and civic values to the learners.
William Arthur once said, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
Values such as respect, responsibility, honesty, hard work, compassion, humility, perseverance, patriotism and fairness carries moral obligation in life and should be instilled to the mind of the learners. Since it takes a period time for a value to become a virtue, educators should help the learners to translate the abstract moral, performance and civic values into concrete moral behavior in their personal relationship. For instance, the learners should be helped to understand and practice on what it means by saying respect for oneself, respect for other people, and respect for all forms of life including the environment.
Researchers in the field of moral and character education have explored and documented numerous models and strategies for educators and practitioners as well as learners for use to inculcate the values in their life. These include use of storytelling, magic words, service learning, moral dilemma discussions, group discussions, peer interactive strategies, modelling, welcoming greetings and saying goodbye at the end of the lesson amongst many others. The Centre for Character and Leadership will continue to work closely with schools and government to implement Character Education Program as the initiative offers practical research driven strategies designed to steer working relationship between parents, teachers and communities in the interest of nurturing good character and citizenship to the young generation and the society.